


Real to Me

by aretia



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Friends to Lovers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-16
Updated: 2019-02-16
Packaged: 2019-10-29 17:25:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17812265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aretia/pseuds/aretia
Summary: A lonely child, Ulaz makes a new best friend named Thace. As they grow up together over the years, their feelings for each other grow from playful friendship to a deep and loyal bond.





	Real to Me

**Author's Note:**

> My piece for the Thulaz Zine!

Sunlight dappled the ground, filtering through the leaves of one of the few trees on the desert landscape. Ulaz lay on his stomach, pulling up blades of dead grass from the sand and stacking them in a tower in front of him. He kicked his legs back and forth in the air in concentration, trying to arrange the grass so that the tower wouldn’t fall. 

He stared wistfully at the playground a short distance away, where other Galra his age were playing on the rusty metal structure. They never made room for Ulaz to play on the playground. He didn’t know whether it was because he looked funny, being only part Galra, or just because they didn’t like him. Even when he waited his turn, the neighborhood kids always pushed past him, like he was invisible. He ignored the noises of their laughter from the playground, and turned his attention back to the grass tower. 

A pair of feet stepped into his vision, bumping into Ulaz’s arm and making him knock the tower over. He looked up and glared at the newcomer, yelling, “Hey!”

It was another Galra child about his age. He was fluffier than Ulaz, likely a full Galra, with large pointed ears that almost looked too big for his head. His ears flattened back in distress. “Sorry! I didn’t mean to bump into you,” he said.

Ulaz’s eyes widened. No one had ever apologized to him for knocking over his tower before; most kids did it on purpose to make fun of him. “That’s okay,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

“I just wanted to come and see what you were doing,” said the boy. He crouched down on his knees in front of Ulaz. “What are you doing?”

“I’m building a tower out of grass,” Ulaz said, embarrassed that the one time someone took an interest in him, he had such a boring answer.

“That sounds kind of boring,” the boy said, as if he were echoing Ulaz’s thoughts. “Want to play with me instead? My name’s Thace.”

Ulaz’s eyes brightened, and a smile spread across his face. “Sure,” he said. Thace held out his hand to help him up, and Ulaz took it, getting to his feet. “I’m Ulaz. What do you want to do?”

“Want to climb this tree?” Thace asked, pointing to the tree next to them.

Ulaz had secretly always wanted to climb the tree, too, but he hesitated. “I don’t know. My mom doesn’t let me climb trees. She said it’s dangerous.” 

“C’mon, it’ll be easy,” Thace said. “Follow me.” He dug his claws into the tree bark, finding knobs in the gnarled trunk where he could rest his hands and feet. Ulaz copied his movements, and they reached the center of the tree where the trunk split off into the canopy of branches. Ulaz sat down on a branch to rest, while Thace was still searching for a way to climb higher. 

“Don’t you think we should get down now?” asked Ulaz.

“Just a little farther, and maybe we can grab one of those fruits up there,” Thace said, his finger pointing to a red fruit dangling from the end of a long branch. He tiptoed along the branch until it became too narrow for his feet, and he stumbled off. Ulaz gasped when Thace didn’t lose his footing at all, and just stood there, floating in midair next to the branch.

“Whoa, Thace! You’re flying!” Ulaz exclaimed. “When did you learn how to fly?” 

“I’ve always known how to,” said Thace. “Can you fly, Ulaz?”

“I don’t know,” said Ulaz. “I’ve never tried it.”

“You want to?” asked Thace, offering his hand again.

Excitement bubbled in Ulaz’s chest as he stood up and walked slowly up the narrow branch, reaching for Thace’s hand. He felt the branch bend under his weight, and Thace gave him an encouraging nod. Just before the branch was about to break, Ulaz closed his eyes, braced his feet against the branch, and jumped.

The wind rushed past his face as the ground rose up to meet him. He hit the ground legs first, and heard a sickening crack when his knee connected with the ground. Searing pain ripped through his body, and tears flooded his eyes before he screamed. His mother ran over and scooped him up in his arms. “Ulaz! What were you thinking?! You can’t just go jumping out of trees!” she scolded him.

Out of the corner of his eye, Ulaz could see Thace chasing after him, his expression horrified. But the tears blurred Ulaz’s vision and he lost sight of Thace. Moments later, he passed out from the pain. 

~

Ulaz lay in his bed. His leg was wrapped in a cast and propped up on top of a pile of pillows. The fall had broken his leg, and now it would be six weeks before he could go outside and play again. Ulaz sulked, alternating between flipping through a picture book and staring up at the tiles on the ceiling.

He heard a noise outside the window. He glanced over and saw Thace, waving at him from outside. Ulaz beckoned to him, and Thace climbed in through the window, which Ulaz didn’t recall anyone leaving open. “I am so sorry,” Thace said, tears rolling down his cheeks, leaving dark trails in his fur. “I didn’t mean for you to get hurt. I didn’t know you couldn’t fly.”

“It’s okay,” said Ulaz, offering him a small smile. “I didn’t know either. I never tried to before. It’s not your fault, Thace.”

“You mean you still want to be friends?” said Thace, wiping the tears from his eyes.

“Of course,” Ulaz replied, and that made Thace smile brightly. 

“You’re not mad at me?” Thace asked.

“No, I’m not mad,” said Ulaz. “But my mom might be.”

“Oh no. What did she say?” Thace prompted him.

“She said that you’re imaginary,” Ulaz replied. “It means you’re not real. I made you up. So I shouldn’t listen to you when you tell me to do stupid stuff.”

Thace’s ears folded back against his head and he frowned. He shifted his weight back and forth on his feet, fidgeting nervously.

“It’s not true, is it?” Ulaz pleaded for Thace to answer. “You’re real, right?”

Thace took a step closer to Ulaz and sat down on the edge of the bed beside him. “I’m real if you want me to be,” he replied. When Ulaz tilted his head at him in confusion, Thace explained, “I don’t really exist in this reality. That’s why I can do stuff like flying or walking through walls.” He stuck his hand through the wall of Ulaz’s bedroom to demonstrate, and Ulaz's eyes widened in amazement.

“But as long as you believe in me, I’m as real as anything you can touch,” said Thace. “Do you?”

“Yes. I believe in you,” Ulaz said. 

Thace reached out and took Ulaz’s hand, and Ulaz felt the warmth of Thace’s fingers curling around his. “Then as long as you need me, I will always stay by your side.”

~

The seat next to Ulaz was not as empty as it looked on the space shuttle ride to the military academy. Thace sat beside him, playing hand games and trying to take his mind off of the dread that coiled in the pit of his stomach. 

When Galra children reached adolescence, many of their parents chose to send them to military academies to begin their career serving the Galra Empire. Ulaz had been chosen as the sole representative from Rekys, his home planet, to attend the most prestigious academy in the Empire, the one where his classmates would include the Prince of the Galra himself. There was a lot of responsibility riding on Ulaz’s shoulders, and he didn’t think he deserved it. 

“It’ll be okay, Ulaz,” Thace reassured him. “You got into this school because you had the highest marks on the aptitude test. You’ll make your parents and Rekys proud, I know it.”

“It’s not about that,” Ulaz replied under his breath. “I know I’ll do fine academically. I’m worried that I won’t be able to make any friends.”

“Well, you’ve got one friend right here,” said Thace. 

He wrapped his arm around Ulaz’s shoulders in what was supposed to be a simple comforting gesture. Ulaz felt his face grow warm and the fur on the back of his neck stand up. Lately, he had been feeling different emotions for Thace than he had before, ones he might define as having a crush, and he was embarrassed. 

Ulaz and Thace had known each other for so long that they shared one mind. He knew that there was no point in keeping secrets from him, and that admitting that he had a crush wouldn’t change anything. Still, he wasn’t sure how to feel about the way Thace made his heart flutter.

“It’s not…” Ulaz began, but the words got caught in his throat. 

“I know, it’s not the same as someone real,” Thace finished for him. That hadn’t been what Ulaz was going to say. He wanted to say that he thought of Thace as more than a friend, but he didn’t know how to express that. He looked down at his lap, feeling guilty for implying that Thace wasn’t enough. He was. He was everything that Ulaz needed, and that was the hardest thing to say. 

Thace’s hand cupped Ulaz’s chin, and tilted his head towards him to meet Thace’s eyes. “Just listen to me,” said Thace. “I’m here for you, and if you’re afraid to do this alone, then we’ll do it together.” 

The shuttle stopped in the loading dock of the academy, and Ulaz walked down the steps, hand in hand with Thace. 

The students that had yet to be corralled by the overworked teachers were still swarming around the schoolyard. One of them bounced up to Ulaz, an orange-skinned half-Galra girl with a multicolored appendage dangling from her head. “I haven’t seen you before. You must be new here. I’m Ezor. What’s your name?”

For a moment, hope welled up in Ulaz’s chest. If half-Galra went to school here, maybe Ulaz’s chances of making friends wouldn’t be so bad. “Ulaz,” he replied. Thace gave his hand a reassuring squeeze, and before Ulaz could think about it, he added, “And this is Thace.” Thace waved his hands, trying to tell Ulaz not to draw attention to him, and Ulaz shrugged sheepishly.

“Who’s Thace? I don’t see anyone else here,” Ezor said, glancing around. Her eyes met with several other students’ across the yard, and in a moment she was flanked by three other girls who looked like they were half Galra, too. 

“Um… You can’t see him,” Ulaz stammered, trying to backtrack. He could tell by the sinister looks on their faces that he had already said too much. 

“You have a friend who’s invisible? You mean like this?” Ezor said, and she disappeared before his eyes. 

“If that’s the case, why doesn’t he reveal himself?” said one of the other girls, the one with blue skin. 

“I have a feeling that it’s not the same as Ezor’s power, Acxa,” said an Altean-accented voice from somewhere behind the largest girl with fluffy pink ears. The group parted, and the boy who stepped towards him had to be Prince Lotor himself. With his white hair, lavender skin, and pointed fleshy ears, he was like the mirror image of Ulaz. But while Ulaz had been mocked for his part-Galra appearance all his life, it appeared that Lotor had become popular and amassed a circle of powerful friends. “Maybe Ulaz doesn’t have any friends, so he had to make one up.”

“Ooh, wouldn’t that be pathetic,” said Ezor, reappearing next to Ulaz’s side and startling him. 

Ulaz snarled. Thace held his hand tight, trying to get him to calm down, but Ulaz only curled his hand into a fist. “Thace may be imaginary, but he’s the most loyal friend I’ve ever had, something I bet none of you will ever know!”

“Ulaz. You don’t have to defend my honor. Please stop, before this gets any worse—” Thace begged him. 

“Shut up, Thace, I can handle this,” Ulaz snapped back at him.

Lotor covered his mouth with his hand to stifle a laugh. “Did you hear that, Thace?” he quipped. “Ulaz doesn’t need your help.” 

Ulaz’s growl turned into a roar, and he lunged at Lotor, aiming his fist at the prince’s face. He didn’t get a chance to land a single punch before the tall and strong girl lifted him up by the back of his shirt, and threw him to the ground. Ulaz spat blood from his mouth, struggling to get up. He searched for Thace, reaching for Thace’s hand to help him up like he always had, but Thace had disappeared. Not even Thace’s comforting aura remained to let him know he was near. He saw him as the bullies laughing at him did: invisible, imaginary. 

~

Ulaz shuffled into his dark bedroom. After only half a varga at the academy, before classes had even started, Ulaz had been expelled for fighting. For fighting the prince, specifically. Fights broke out on that campus all the time, but Ulaz had picked the wrong fight.

Ulaz saw Thace sitting on the edge of his bed, silhouetted in the moonlight. “Thace! You’re back!” Ulaz cried, throwing himself onto the bed and wrapping his arms around Thace. “Where did you go, back there at the school?”

Thace held Ulaz in his arms, stroking the fur on Ulaz’s crest. “I couldn’t stand to watch you get hurt,” Thace replied solemnly.

“So you left?!” Ulaz demanded, pulling away from Thace. Angry tears burned in his eyes. “Why did you leave me when I needed you most?”

“Because there was nothing I could do to stop them,” Thace said. “I cannot interfere with your world. Even though I wanted to, I couldn’t step in to defend you.”

“You promised that you would stay with me as long as I needed you,” Ulaz sobbed. 

“I know I did,” said Thace. He bowed his head and lowered his ears. “But if you’re going to get hurt for my sake, then I must leave.”

“No! Thace, I need you!” He grabbed Thace’s wrist as Thace stood up. Tears rolled down Ulaz’s cheeks, uninhibited. “I love you!”

Thace’s face was still solemn as he looked back at Ulaz, but his eyes shone with sincerity, brimming with tears of his own. “I feel the same. I will always care for you, Ulaz. Nothing will change that.” 

Then, he began to float up into the air, tethered by a beam of moonlight. His outline turned translucent, and his hand slipped through Ulaz’s fingers. “This is goodbye for now. I will see you again,” Thace said. He leaned down and kissed Ulaz on the cheek, then faded away in a burst of sparkles. 

Ulaz reached up and touched his cheek. He felt a warm, burning sensation there, but he couldn’t explain it. His fingers touched the damp residue of tears on his face, and he started bawling. 

Even though he couldn’t remember why, he felt like a gaping hole had been torn in his chest, deeper than any loss he’d ever known. He lay down in his bed, curled up around himself, and let the tears flow silently until he fell asleep. 

~

Ulaz’s career as a commander of the Galra Empire was doomed the moment he was expelled from the academy, but Ulaz chose a different path for himself. He discovered the Blade of Marmora, and decided to join the rebellion against Zarkon. Years later, he was assigned a post at one of the Blade of Marmora’s top-secret bases, working as a medic. He was getting ready to close up at the end of his shift when he heard a claw tapping at his door. 

The Galra standing on the other side of the door perked his ears up in surprise when Ulaz opened it. “Oh! You’re not who I was expecting to see…” he said, with a note of concern in his voice. In the Blade of Marmora, rapid turnover happened as a result of the organization’s dangerous missions, and Ulaz’s thoughts momentarily drifted to morbid curiosity at what had happened to the medic he had replaced. 

“My name is Ulaz. I’m the new medic,” Ulaz replied. Ulaz’s gaze fell upon the other Blade’s arm, which he was clutching with his free hand. “May I help you?” he asked.

“Um… I think I might need assistance, yes.” The Blade turned over his arm and removed his palm, revealing a gash cutting through the thick fur on his forearm. 

“Sit down, I’ll get the disinfectant and bandages,” Ulaz said. He led Thace to sit down in the exam chair while he hurried to his cabinet. He couldn’t shake the sense prickling in the back of his mind that the Blade seemed familiar. Something about the shape of his face, with his pointed, high-set ears, resonated with an image in Ulaz’s memory, but not enough to place—maybe he had known someone who looked similar back on Rekys. “What’s your name?” he asked him, hoping that would give him some answers.

“Thace,” the Blade replied. 

That name fit him uncannily well, almost as if Ulaz would have been able to guess it without being told. Ulaz couldn’t even remember where he had heard the name Thace before. He knew he had never met a Thace; maybe it was the name of some forgettable celebrity.

Ulaz turned back to Thace, holding a cloth dipped in disinfectant in his hand. He wiped it over Thace’s wound gently, causing Thace to wince as the solution burned his skin. “How did you get hurt?” Ulaz asked.

“It’s embarrassing,” Thace said, lowering his ears. The expression made him look even more maddeningly familiar. “I was just training and… I guess I need to be more careful where I swing my blade when I’m sparring with the training droid. I tried to block with both my arm and my blade, and… well. I shouldn’t even be a Blade agent if I’m this clumsy.” 

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Ulaz reassured him, wrapping the gauze bandage tight around his arm. “I’ve always been clumsy, too. My mother told me that one time when I was a little cub, I jumped out of a tree and broke my leg just because my imaginary friend told me to.” Ulaz chuckled self-consciously, unsure why he was sharing such private information with Thace. He had just met him, and yet there was that eerie feeling of familiarity, like he’d known him all his life.

Thace looked up at Ulaz, and his yellow eyes lit up with recognition. “Ulaz?” he said, in a voice so hesitant yet so certain. 

It was like he had slipped a key into a lock inside Ulaz’s mind, and the memories came flooding back. Even though age had chiseled his face and streaked his pointed ears with hints of gray fur, he was unmistakably the same Thace who had been Ulaz’s childhood imaginary friend. It wasn’t possible—but somehow here he was. “Thace?” Ulaz replied, his voice hushed by shock. “Do you remember?”

“When you fell from the tree? It’s faint, like it happened in a dream. I wasn’t there, but when you said it, it felt right,” Thace explained. “But I do remember you. I met you when I was playing in the garden on the base, do you remember that?”

New memories danced in Ulaz’s mind, watercolor images of a pastoral childhood with Thace, both sides of their parallel lives. “Yes,” Ulaz said, sighing with relief as he examined his own memories that had been locked away for so long, like puzzle pieces fitting back into the empty spaces in his mind. “This is the first time I have been able to remember any of it since… since I lost you.” Finally remembering his best friend again felt like home. 

Once he was satisfied with his own, Ulaz explored Thace’s side of the memories. They seemed to stop when Thace was around ten years old. It was bittersweet when Ulaz realized that he must have faded from Thace’s life years before Thace did from his. “How did it happen for you?” Ulaz asked. “When you… I mean…”

“When the memories were sealed?” Thace filled in. “At the time, I couldn’t say for sure. But it must have been around when my younger sisters, the twins, were born. My parents went away on a long mission shortly after. My older sister was still on the base, but she was always busy training for her Trial.” 

Ulaz sat down next to him on the exam chair. His hand fell on top of Thace’s, and Thace didn’t move to pull it away. Thace’s posture and face were guarded, hiding a storm of emotion just underneath the surface. 

“I was still just a kid, but I had to raise my younger siblings almost all on my own. I forgot what it was like to have friends my own age to play with, and I forgot about you,” Thace confessed. “I always had a sense that I’d lost something… but I never knew what it was, until now.”

He sounded terribly lonely. Lonely like Ulaz, who had grown up as an only child and a social outcast, but different enough that Ulaz didn’t want to say anything implying that he understood what Thace had gone through. But Ulaz knew that feeling of longing for something just out of reach of his memory all too well. 

“What was it like for you?” Thace asked.

Ulaz was too embarrassed to go into the details of how he had lost Thace. But Thace had bared his heart to him, so Ulaz felt like he owed him the same. 

“It hurt, when you left,” said Ulaz. “It hurt so much more because I couldn’t remember what I was missing. I couldn’t cherish the memories I had of you. Now that you’re back, I feel complete. I missed you, Thace.”

Ulaz couldn’t resist the emotions surging through him, and leaned over to wrap his arms around Thace. “I missed you too,” Thace said, reassuring, as he enfolded Ulaz in his arms as well.

After a long hug that left Ulaz’s heart swelling with warmth, they pulled apart. Thace looked back at him, his gold eyes blazing with the intensity of a wildfire. “What do you think this means?” he asked. 

“I think it means the universe is trying to tell us something,” Ulaz said, and then he hesitated. All the words he wanted to say lingered on the back of his tongue and dried his throat. He wanted to tell Thace that he was sorry for how they parted, and that he didn’t ever want to lose him again, but that would be too much, too soon. After all, they had just met, and Ulaz wasn’t going to lose his chance this time. Ulaz had the opportunity to do it all over again, and be what Thace needed, the way Thace was for him in his youth. 

“It means that I want to get to know you better,” Ulaz said finally. “I want to make up for the time we lost, when our memories were sealed.”

“I think I would like that,” Thace said, smiling back at him with a radiant expression filled with hope and promise. They had their memories back at last, but Ulaz wanted to focus on savoring the present, and building a future with Thace.


End file.
